DNA may link 'East Coast Rapist' suspect to Maryland case

DNA evidence may link a man suspected in rape cases along the East Coast to another sexual assault in Maryland, and police there said they plan to file charges if lab tests confirm a match, authorities said Monday.

By ERIC TUCKER

The Bulletin

By ERIC TUCKER

Posted Jul. 25, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jul 25, 2011 at 12:49 PM

By ERIC TUCKER

Posted Jul. 25, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jul 25, 2011 at 12:49 PM

WASHINGTON

DNA evidence may link a man suspected in rape cases along the East Coast to another sexual assault in Maryland, and police there said they plan to file charges if lab tests confirm a match, authorities said Monday.

Officer Kelly Lawson, a spokeswoman for the Greenbelt Police Department, told The Associated Press that the man's DNA has been linked to a 1999 rape in that city. She said a state police laboratory would conduct more testing to establish a firm match to Aaron Thomas, who authorities have said is linked by DNA testing to rapes and other attacks on 17 other women from Virginia to Connecticut.

Greenbelt is in Prince George's County, where several other attacks linked to Thomas have occurred.

Thomas is charged with three rapes in Virginia and has pleaded not guilty to another in Connecticut. A prosecutor has said Thomas likely will face trial in New Haven, Conn., on a first-degree sexual assault charge before he is tried in Virginia.

Lawson said police in Greenbelt would not file new charges against Thomas unless the lab tests proved a definitive DNA match directly connecting him to the 1999 case. Investigators sent their DNA evidence to the state lab after discovering a possible match in a regional database.

Thomas, an unemployed truck driver, was arrested in March his hometown of New Haven after authorities say DNA confirmed he was the so-called East Coast Rapist.

Thomas has been suspected of sexual assaults dating to 1997, but he has told investigators that he began committing the attacks six years before that, according to law enforcement officials familiar with the case.

The first assault authorities have connected to Thomas occurred in Forestville, Md., with a man pulling a gun on a woman and forcing her into the woods, then fleeing on a 10-speed bicycle. Seven months later, a woman was raped behind a restaurant garbage bin in Maryland; the following year a 16-year-old girl was raped, also in Maryland. Authorities said the same man started attacking women in Virginia until 2001, when two victims were raped in the same attack in Maryland.

Police said the suspect resurfaced in 2006 in New England, peeping on a girl doing her homework in Rhode Island before her screams scared him off. Two teenage trick-or-treaters were raped in 2009 in Woodbridge, Va.